


for hearth and home

by ronsenboobi (snewvilliurs)



Series: arroway family adventures in eorzea 2: stormblood boogaloo [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ala Mhigan Resistance, Emotionally Repressed Ala Mhigans, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Non-WoL Adventurer, Patch 4.0: Stormblood Spoilers, Revolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 21:23:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21004391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snewvilliurs/pseuds/ronsenboobi
Summary: brothers-in-arms, family, and the fight for home.He looked down at Meffrid’s sword laid across his lap, pressed his bare palm to its hilt. “I just had to cross the Wall understand what it was I was fighting for, is all,” he said gently.“Liberty or death,” Morgana said.





	1. before the wall

**Author's Note:**

> featuring my non-wol main, sairsel arroway, a half-elezen ranger; his mother, morgana arroway, a member of the ala mhigan resistance; my buddy [livvy](http://onwesterlywinds.tumblr.com/)'s ala mhigan company leader, ashelia riot; and my buddy sammish's former pirate, madelaine lachance.

In truth, Sairsel was not quite certain what it meant to be an adventurer.  


It was a path he’d decided to follow once he realized it was better to be on a path of his own, even if it was obscure both in direction and in what he wanted from it, than to follow something that he increasingly felt was never meant for him. And it wasn’t that the whole clan was to blame—Nairel’s mother was, by far, the most skilled of them at finding words that strongly implied he had no real place among them without saying it outright, and even she tempered herself as a courtesy to her daughter and Sairsel’s father. Even at nineteen summers, Sairsel had wisdom enough to know that he himself had his part of responsibility in it, too. He still didn’t know whether Nairel’s mother had meant it as a kindness when she told him that Oschon himself had cursed him with wandering feet, but to him it had felt like the first thing setting him free.

Perhaps adventuring meant fighting, or helping as many as possible—but for Sairsel, at least, it started with finally being left alone.

He loved the freedom of solitude. He was perfectly content to provide for himself and to spend his days as a vagabond through the Wood; one day soon, he told himself, he’d take another path and see the rest of Eorzea. As long as the forest had for him new landscapes that he hadn’t seen on his own, though, he didn’t want to leave it all behind. 

For the most part, he avoided the settlements—and most pointedly of all, he avoided Gridania itself—except out of necessity. Even if it did come to necessity, he’d try and find every possible alternative to having to find himself among people who had never been quite his own even when he’d had a clan to call his: the settlements in the Wood were all offshoots of Gridania, and he was ever more of an outsider to them than he was to his people. When the strap of his quiver wore down so terminally that his most recent attempts at sewing it back together broke his sewing needle, he resigned himself to the inevitable with a dread that crawled unbidden inside him and settled as a weight low in his ribcage.

His apprehension, as it so often did, proved to have been pointless and unfounded as he passed through the open gates of Quarrymill: no one so much as spared him a second glance. He wondered why it was so, when he’d been made to feel for so long that he stood out in every possible way. Could his short ears still be seen as those of a full-blooded Elezen at a passing glance? Or was it simply that he looked enough like an adventurer that it was expected of him to be an outsider? Perhaps it was the foul weather, with its bloated dark grey sky and cutting winds, that made everyone less keen to appreciate their surroundings.

It wasn’t until he’d traded a few skins for a new strap and sewing needle that he overheard the Highlander’s argument with the Hearer, and understood that he went unnoticed because someone stranger than he was stirring up trouble.

The man was built like something carved out of sturdy brown rock, but emaciated; the muscles of his bare torso were much too sculpted, and exhaustion showed in the dark colour sunken deep under his eyes. He wore his black hair braided and tied back, but for a few beaded braids framing his face that shivered and tapped against one another in the wind. Behind him, a few others stood and sat near the water, the lot of them looking just as—if not worse—haggard as the man did. Among them lay a man who seemed halfway to his grave, sweaty with fever and breathing raggedly.

These people were not of the Twelveswood; that much was clear in the way the man spoke to the Hearer and cursed the elementals. Desperate anger was written in every tense inch of his posture—before he even understood his plight, Sairsel found himself feeling for him, though he was unsure as to why. Perhaps it was all his father had said to him, of Hearers abusing their positions to give commands that had little to do with the elementals’ true will; even Nairel’s mother claimed that their will was in every part of the Wood—every leaf, every branch, every stone, every storm and wind and flood—and that the Hearers were but fallible proxies. The wandering clans knew woodwrath better than the Gridanians and their guilds ever could, and Sairsel’s father had raised his children to be wary of the abuse of which people could be capable when they believed too staunchly in keeping others out.

He stepped forward before he could be afraid of doing it, his heart jumping in his throat when he realized there was no pulling back. “What’s going on?” he asked, turning his attention to the man more than the Hearer herself.

“One of my men is grievously injured, and these—” the man said, gritting his teeth against insults that could only worsen his position, “they refuse to offer succor out of superstition and judgement of us outsiders, even in the face of _begging._”

“It is the will of the elementals. They have denied us to act, and they will continue to do so, and we will continue to obey their will for the safety of all those present.”

Sairsel scoffed, glancing over to the wounded man before turning his gaze back to the Hearer. _Don’t be reckless,_ said a voice at the back of his mind that sounded suspiciously like his sister, _don’t look for a fight._ He’d never been so combative, not since he’d realized it only ever made things worse—but now, he was tired of making himself as small as he could be.

“Aye, because the elementals do terribly fear a dying man,” Sairsel said flatly.

“The elementals do not fear. The elementals—”

“Speak to you, sure, but I’d wager it’s been rather quiet of late. When’s the last time you’ve seen woodwrath strike since the sky went red?” he asked. The Hearer opened her mouth, and Sairsel turned to the man beside him. “What do you need?”

“You doom yourself, boy,” the Hearer said before the man could answer, staring pointedly at Sairsel’s ears. “You gamble with the grace they have afforded you by letting you walk our land.”

Sairsel had never been so calm in his anger. A cold chill spread through him down to his very fingertips, and he felt like someone else as he took the man’s arm and began to steer him away, his other hand outstretched as he looked up at the trees around them.

“Woodwrath take me now, then, if the elementals so staunchly oppose the mere fucking act of preserving the life the Wood grants us.”

It was more complex than that; he knew that much. He knew it was about balance, that the Wood could destroy with a ferocity that did not discriminate; no one life was worth more than any other. But Sairsel had grown up with the belief that perhaps—just perhaps—any who took the time to live in the Wood and listen to its heart knew the elementals just as well as any Hearer could. So he trusted his instinct, and the elementals did not strike him down.

The man was looking at him with an expression Sairsel didn’t understand—eyes wide, brow furrowed. Sairsel gave him a tentative shadow of a smile.

“You— You’re the first person here to even dare to help us,” the man said.

“Well, I’m not from around here.”

“An adventurer, then?”

Even though he’d told his family otherwise when he left, he didn’t feel like an adventurer. “I’m not—I mean, I am from the Wood. Just not this town. We believe different things about the elementals, I suppose.” He scratched his neck. “So, er, your man—what does he need?”

“His wound’s festered. We have no healer with us, and I’ve no means of obtaining any remedy while stuck in this gods-forsaken place.”

Sairsel was startled to realize that there was something he could do for them. Though both of his children had shown more of a penchant for the path of the hunters, Sairsel’s father had been staunch in his insistence that they should learn as much of what he knew as the clan’s herbalist, and Sairsel had taken better to it than Nairel, who could hardly sit still. He’d helped him, once, with a hunter who hadn’t properly cleaned a scratch she’d obtained from a broken tree branch; a fever had settled in within days.

“I can get you what he needs. Let me— I’ll just be gone a few bells at most. Do you think he has that long?”

“We can only hope that he does,” the man said, touching Sairsel’s arm just as he made to turn. “Thank you. I won’t forget this kindness.”

Sairsel made an uncomfortable gesture that was meant to be dismissive of himself; it was only as he had walked away that he realized it may have come as plainly dismissive and coarse. He ruminated the concern for a time, while he searched for the herbs he needed in the underbrush—but what did it matter? The man had far more dire things on his mind than whether the skinny half-Elezen helping him had reacted to his gratitude in an impolite manner or not, and surely the help itself balanced it out. What Sairsel understood the least was himself, for having gotten involved in the first place as much as for how eagerly he seemed to want to make this man think well of him.

Behind its veil of grey, the sun crawled along the sky as though it meant to steal daylight away, barely noticeable in its progression. It was a harder search than Sairsel had expected, and by the time he finally did find the white-leafed plant he sought, his thoughts were weighed down by doubt—doubt that perhaps the elementals had not struck him down with woodwrath, but that this was their way of showing their disapproval. It was a stupid and poisonous thought to have, he realized as he knelt down and began to pluck at the leaves as efficiently as he could; the Wood provided. It always had, and always will.

All that mattered was that the right people knew it, and knew to make something of that boon. Sairsel uttered a silent prayer of thanks as he prepared the remedy in a wide leaf from a nearby tree, for want of a mortar, and kept those words in his mind the whole way back to Quarrymill.

The wounded man had not yet breathed his last. When they saw him, the whole pack of his comrades seemed to shuffle to their feet at once, moving towards Sairsel expectantly.

“I’ve got it. You only need to apply it directly over his wound—” he began, and a spindly woman snatched the leaf out of his hands with a quick, thickly accented word of gratitude, “—er. Just make sure to spread it at least an ilm around, too.”

“Thank Rhalgr you’ve come,” said the man from earlier. _Rhalgr?_ That gave Sairsel pause. “Stay here—give me a moment.”

Sairsel watched, meeting the thanks of the others with curt nods as he watched the man kneel before his wounded companion. He took his hand, pressed a palm to his glistening forehead, and whispered what Sairsel assumed were words of comfort—to his surprise, even through the fever and what must have been immense pain, the wounded man managed a little smile that he turned up towards Sairsel with a grateful nod. That fleeting moment of serenity was broken as the spindly woman began applying the remedy; Sairsel looked away from the wounded man’s contorting features, not knowing whether it was for his own sake or to allow him some privacy in his pain.

The man with the braids stood and returned to Sairsel, taking him a few feet away to gaze upon the gentle stream running through the village. He turned his eyes to Sairsel: a brown dark with honesty yet softened by gratitude, though no less worn around the edges.

“You’ve done Gallien a great kindness, lad,” he said. “All of us. I wish there was something I could give to repay you, but we’ve nothing—”

Sairsel shook his head. “I didn’t do this for coin. I did it because… I don’t know. The Wood is my home. It’s not right, what that Hearer did.”

The man nodded and leaned with both hands on the shoddy fence. He looked out into the water once again with a furrowed brow for a moment, grappling with his thoughts, before turning back to Sairsel again like he’d just remembered something, holding out a hand. “I’m Meffrid.”

“Meffrid,” Sairsel repeated. He shook his hand, then belatedly pointed to himself. “Sairsel.”

“Well, I meant what I said earlier, Sairsel: I won’t forget this.”

“Me neither,” Sairsel said clumsily, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “May I ask—how come you’ve found yourselves here? You’re obviously not Gridanian. Are you going to be all right from here on out?”

That made Meffrid smile—a weary, diminished sort of smile, but it was a smile nonetheless. “Aye, lad, we’ll be all right; I’ll make certain of it. We’ve come from Gyr Abania—from the Ala Mhigan Resistance. We have a hell of our own over there. I led them all the way here for their safety, but I suppose that being away from imperial dogs only means we’re closer to a different sort of hound.”

“I’m sorry,” Sairsel said. He didn’t know whether he was apologizing for their whole situation—was that presumptuous?—or for the hardships suffered in the Wood. Perhaps it was simply for Meffrid himself that he felt sorry; for the way his gaze fell spoke of all the weight on his shoulders, all the responsibility he carried by himself. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for. We’re more than halfway to Thanalan by now, aren’t we? As soon as Gallien has recovered, we’ll be on our way, and we’ll soon be safe in Little Ala Mhigo.”

A heaviness settled in Sairsel’s chest. “I hope the Wanderer guides your path.”

“Thank you.”

Meffrid laid a hand on Sairsel’s shoulder and squeezed, a gesture that made him feel as though they were not strangers at all. And yet, they were—Sairsel made certain to remind himself of that when he parted ways with the Ala Mhigans and left Quarrymill feeling stifled and guilty. They were strangers on separate paths. He forced himself not to hope to see them again, because their plight was a faraway one, and Sairsel had given what he could when they needed it.

He never did see Meffrid on this side of Baelsar’s Wall again.


	2. Chapter 2

“Are you Gridanian, by any chance?” asked the Grand Steward.

Sairsel shifted uneasily in his seat, wondering—for perhaps the fifteenth time—what in the seven hells he was still doing here, sitting in a free company mansion in the middle of the desert across from a woman who somehow inspired both terror and inexplicable awe in him. He considered correcting her, but decided against delving into the subtleties of what it meant for a forestborn of the clans to be called Gridanian when he had never once lived in the city for a day in his life.

“Is that going to be a problem?” he asked instead.

The Grand Steward tilted her head. Ashelia Riot, her name was; leader of the Riskbreakers, a company that, against all sense, Sairsel still considered joining. Something in her eyes kept him rooted—something of an anchor, true and fierce—against everything that told him to get up and leave. Everything but his instinct.

“Not at all. I’m simply surprised that a Gridanian would be interested in joining a company run by a Mhigan.”

Sairsel didn’t stop to wonder if there was some age-old disdain lingering from the Autumn War to that remark—there wasn’t—and instead mumbled something clumsy about the imperials and his home and dedication to what was right that, within the year, he would already have forgotten. What he did remember was the thought at the back of his mind, then—that if Ashelia Riot was as caring and selfless as what he had seen of the man named Meffrid in Quarrymill, he would be prouder to follow her than any Gridanian he could ever meet.

(He learned, soon enough, that he was prouder to follow her than any other Ala Mhigan he could ever meet, too.)

*******

There was a twinkle in Madelaine’s eye that Sairsel knew, by now, heralded a particularly clever or biting remark. He was already preparing to roll his eyes.

“So the little rabbit wants to learn to hop.”

Sairsel rolled his eyes. “You know what, this was a bad idea. I can ask someone in Little Ala Mhigo. They’re always going on about Mhigan pikemen, anyroad,” he said, and made to turn and leave. Madelaine was smirking as her fingers wrapped around his wrist, tugging him back.

“Don’t be a child; it only makes you look like a boy _trying_ to be a man,” she said, twirling a finger in the direction of the stubble on his jaw. “Besides,” and she bent to reach under the bed, dragging out a long bundle that she opened to reveal two lances, “you didn’t come all the way to Coerthas just to see my face, did you?”

“You’d be surprised of the lengths I’d go just for you, Madame Lachance,” Sairsel said. It didn’t have quite the suave effect he was hoping for with his teeth chattering; acclimatizing to the desert heat had been a hell and a half, and now it left him especially ill-suited for the cold climates he’d always tolerated better than most.

Madelaine snorted. “What is it really, Sairsel?”

“It’s—” he began unsteadily, then sighed. “The Resistance, they’re all people who’ve been fighting for years. And, I know, they had no other choice, even the ones my age, because Ul’dah and that whole fucking _desert_ have been cruel to them—but I’m not like that. I’m a hunter, not a warrior. Sword-skill doesn’t come easy to me and I know I disappoint my mother every time I try to make her understand why swords feel so heavy in my hands.”

“What makes you think learning the lance is going to be easier than a sword?” Madelaine asked, keeping a level gaze on him.

“I’m an archer. I’m better at a distance.”

Madelaine raised an eyebrow and spoke in an airy voice, the sarcasm clear in her words: “How unlike you to balk at intimacy even in violence.”

“Oh, you know me. Love looking people in the eyes.”

Without a word, Madelaine gathered up the lances. She paused by a chest at the foot of her bed, opened it with one hand, and tossed Sairsel a fur. “Well, come on, little rabbit. We’ve a long way to go before you’re worthy of the Sirens, so we had better get started _yesterday._”


	3. beyond the wall

Sairsel was still unsure of how, exactly, he felt about standing in Gyr Abania.

It wasn’t like coming home, of course; how could it be? He had come into the world in the Wood, lived most of his life in the Wood. Ala Mhigo had been a distant thing to which he was blind beyond a wall that had seemed, for twenty years, to be utterly impenetrable.

Seeing the mountains from the top of Baelsar’s Wall for the first time, with his mother at his side—or perhaps rather he at hers—had been a moment he knew he would remember for all his days. But standing on Gyr Abanian soil—that was not a moment. It was seconds, minutes, hours all woven together, as continuous as the flow of life itself; how could he make sense of something so utterly immeasurable?

He’d liked East End best, predictably, because it felt familiar. The sound of the wind through the trees and the distant rush of water, the vibrant colour of the canopy, the earthy smells of nature—they all spoke to him as though to a friend, albeit in a different voice. East end was the Wood without the elementals, and it should have unnerved him, but it didn’t; he heard not the silence he expected.

The woods in Gyr Abania spoke the same words, even if they did so in another language. Sairsel could almost understand it, but they moved on deeper into the Fringes before he could wholly make sense of it. There was a wideness to the highlands that simply disoriented him—greater, somehow, than the bare and sandy expanses of sand in Thanalan. In the Fringes, the sky seemed to open up even higher and farther; the waters swallowed up what might have been finite in the dusty ground and made it endless, from waterfall to stream to tree.

He couldn’t explain how beautiful he found it, and how small it made him feel.

Perhaps it made him quiet. It came as a surprise that anyone even noticed, because that was how they knew him—but Leofric seemed to see the difference. When Sairsel rejoined his unit in Castrum Oriens, it fell naturally that he should bring up the rear, because he was, above all things, a ranger. As they reached the Striped Hills, however—all rock and dust and dead trees and harsh sun, but air cooler than Thanalan could ever breathe in daytime—Leofric insisted that Sairsel should stay with him at the front.

Sairsel didn’t ask why, but his expression did.

“Don’t look so glum and wary, hey? It’s not a punishment,” Leofric said, clapping him hard on the back.

“I just thought it would be better if I lay low for a while,” Sairsel muttered. He very carefully did not look over his shoulder at the others despite how much he wanted to; he didn’t need any more reasons to look suspicious. “After the whole Griffin business—”

Leofric gave him a perplexed, incredulous look. “What, you think people think badly of you for survivin’ hell? Because you followed him?”

“Everyone’s going around saying he was a madman and a fanatic.”

“Aye, because he was. No one was saying that before he went and threw himself from the Wall to summon a primal, though, were they?” Leofric said. “We’re all oracles when something’s already passed.”

Sairsel raised a hand to his chest, scratching at the fresh scar through his coat. Every day, he wondered if he would have survived the Griffin if not for magical healing. He certainly would not have been back on his feet so soon without it, and that alone was more of a blessing than he deserved, but _gods_ did it itch.

When he didn’t answer straight away, Leofric added, keenly: “Everyone needs someone to blame for our dead, Arroway. We can’t blame the imperials this time; it was one of our own. So we need to tell ourselves he was the worst of us.”

The worst part of it all was that Sairsel could see past his rage, and it wasn’t clarity that waited on the other side. It was a single, muddled thought, one that tore at him: he wasn’t certain whether the Griffin—Ilberd—really was the worst of them. Only the most desperate.

That, he never would dare to speak aloud. “I suppose,” he said instead.

“Aren’t you going to ask why you’re at the front, then?” Leofric asked after a moment.

“Why, you want me to? You could just tell me.”

Leofric draped a heavy arm across his shoulders and leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “I want to see your face when you see the Reach for the first time,” he said, straightening up but not pulling away. “Everyone in my unit’s been at least once, so it’s not new for any of us. But the young ones—it’s always something for you lot. First time ever seeing Gyr Abania somewhere that’s really, _truly_ still ours.”

There was something in the way Leofric’s voice weaved those words together that made Sairsel’s heart jump in his throat. He’d seen East End, the Velodyna—all with the creeping metal of magitek almost everywhere the eye could see. He wondered if he would feel something that he could understand when he saw it; Leofric’s manner made him hopeful of it, at the very least.

“I didn’t know you to be so sentimental.”

“About the right things, I am. You’ll see,” Leofric said. “You’ll understand.”

Sairsel expected more rock that wouldn’t speak to him at all when they came upon a dead end by the end of the afternoon, the light falling low and hot on the cliff face. Then Leofric opened a tiny satchel at his belt and blew a pinch of dust into the air, and the glamour fell away with a shimmer, and he smelled the water and heard the rush of waterfalls.

The sky opened. He was home.

Not _his_ home, perhaps, but a home nonetheless—with the Destroyer standing high under the heavens, palm outstretched, water streaming down from the mountain behind him into a shimmering pool all around his altar. The temples were carved into the rock itself, and colour spread between the walls in tents and awnings and bright torches even in the daylight, and _people_—the Resistance as he had never seen it, as it never could be in Little Ala Mhigo. Gnarled trees stood between the tents, twenty summers dead in flames, but patches of green grew at their feet, creeping up: life clawing its way back even into the things that seemed lost.

Gazing upon Rhalgr’s Reach, it truly did almost seem as though freedom was close enough to grasp.

“Told you,” said Leofric’s voice near Sairsel’s ear as he stood in awe of that illusion. He put a hand on Sairsel’s shoulder and steered him forward through the base while Sairsel barely even looked ahead; there was too much to see, too much to take in.

The statue of Rhalgr drew his gaze the most. It was the first time, Sairsel realized, that he saw him represented as more than a symbol: now he was a man with a face, a hand that seemed to be calling him forth, with moss growing at his feet and creeping up the rocky folds of his clothing. Where the water flowed, green followed, and the Destroyer stood at the center of it all as though it came from him. Rays of waning sunlight fell into his hand, colouring the stone of the Reach an orange gold.

Sairsel was staring, he knew, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away even as Leofric stopped to greet old comrades, exchanging embraces and handshakes. The unit fanned out, finding reunions of their own, and the relief and energy seemed to feed that light, that freedom—without Leofric’s hand on his shoulder, Sairsel brought his gaze down to the people around him. It was a beautiful sight, and though he was alone in that moment, being an observer did not make him feel as much of an outsider as he did in Little Ala Mhigo.

_This_ was the Resistance: the devotion, the embraces—the people fighting not against the Empire so much as for one another.

The voices tumbled over one another in laughter and spirited conversation, and then something moved through the crowd, and one familiar voice cut through the rest. At first, Sairsel mistook it for Leofric’s; he looked his way, only for his gaze to catch on a man moving past Leofric, and towards him.

“Destroyer take me,” said the man just as Sairsel noticed him. “Sairsel?”

Of all the things Sairsel had expected of coming to Gyr Abania, he would never have dreamed of hearing his name spoken this way—and at the headquarters of the Ala Mhigan Resistance, of all places. His lips parted, his voice caught in his throat and onto a whirlwind of emotions he didn’t understand; he could only cling to Meffrid as he pulled him in a bone-crushing hug.

“You’re here,” Meffrid said, his voice a muffled rumble against Sairsel, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I can’t believe it either,” Sairsel breathed.

Meffrid pulled away, keeping one hand on Sairsel’s shoulder, heavy brown eyes searching his face. The weariness Sairsel had known still wore him around the edges, but his cheeks were fuller, his frame stronger than it had been in Quarrymill. Sairsel couldn’t help but wonder what changes Meffrid saw in him.

“I don’t imagine you remember me, after all this time,” Meffrid said with a sympathetic smile that didn’t completely conceal a spark of hope.

“Of course I remember, Meffrid,” Sairsel said. “I never forgot. I’m— I’m with the Resistance, now.”

Meffrid smiled. “Aye, I can see that,” he said fondly, taking Sairsel’s face between his hands with the warmth of a brother. “Gods, let me look at you.”

Still unsure—but growing less and less so—Sairsel laid a hand on Meffrid’s forearm as he watched him in silent wonder. The attention made the back of his neck burn, but it didn’t matter.

“You look—” Meffrid said, searching for the right words. “You look so—”

“Grown?”

Meffrid corrected him with unshaking certainty, almost incredulous in his affection, that very nearly made Sairsel weep: “Mhigan.”

“Ah, well—about that,” Sairsel said, laughing nervously, “I am half-Mhigan, as it turns out. Recent discovery.”

“I’ll want to hear all of it,” Meffrid said, and Sairsel was shocked to realize that he actually meant it. He gave Sairsel’s cheek a pat, looking into his eyes and smiling once more. “Feels like that Spinner has been working herself to the bone for us, aye?”

Sairsel couldn’t help but smile, too. “Aye, she has.”


	4. Chapter 4

Few were those who could wake Sairsel—for the simple reason that he was usually long on his feet by the time most people even started stirring. He woke with the crows, his father always said; in the misty, cold hours where the Wood was silent but for the croaking and the fluttering of black wings in the trees. Even in the Resistance—in Little Ala Mhigo—he’d always been among the first out of their bedrolls, and they were by no means the sort who lazed about. But Rhalgr’s Reach was different.

Meffrid was different.

Sairsel learned that on the morning he woke, his face still smashed into his bedroll, to Meffrid halfway inside his tent and poking his hip with the pommel of a sword. It was, at the very least, sheathed.

“Oi, new blood,” he said, as though they were strangers—and grinned when Sairsel cracked a bleary eye open in his direction— “Time to earn your keep.”

Miserably, Sairsel pushed himself up and rubbed his eyes. “What d’you need me for?” he asked with a stifled yawn.

“I’ve heard from your unit you’re a gifted scout. So I want to see that scouting for myself. Come on,” he said, tossing a green jacket right at him. “You know that barricaded tunnel to the east? Of course you do; you’re a scout. I want you there in ten minutes; Lyse is already waiting for us. There’ll be food if you get there in time.”

Sairsel extricated himself from his bedroll as quickly as he could and dressed, taking a few self-indulgent seconds to hold out the jacket and admire it: the same style that most members of the Resistance wore in Rhalgr’s Reach, and now he had one of his own—for the first time, he felt like perhaps he did have a place of his own among them, after all. He shrugged the jacket on to combat the morning chill and ducked out of his tent, hurrying through the rest of the steps to get himself ready.

As soon as he appeared by the tunnel, Meffrid handed him a dry cake wrapped in leaves. “I’m on time?” Sairsel asked.

Meffrid glanced at Lyse, who shrugged, and gave a shrug of his own. “No idea. Everyone ready to go?”

“Ready and raring,” Lyse said, enthusiastically thumping her fist into her palm. When Sairsel merely nodded, as though afraid to take up space, Meffrid clapped his shoulder and took the lead.

It was strange, traveling with Lyse. Sairsel knew her only in passing—the Scions called her Yda, when he was only half-conscious in the aftermath of Baelsar’s Wall, and by the time he’d rejoined them with Ahtynwyb to cross over into Castrum Oriens, she had shed the mask and taken a first step towards freedom. The way the Resistance spoke of her was as though of an heir, and Sairsel was beginning to piece together the legacy her father had left Ala Mhigo; he felt like a voyeur even knowing this, and an intruder even more as they walked together on the side of the Reach that would lead her to her childhood home.

Even though this path only took him further and further away from his own home, she treated him no differently than the rest. With her and Meffrid beside him, the Peaks were silent giants not judging his approach, but welcoming him.

And welcoming Lyse, too. Sairsel was glad, in some way, for the distraction that his focus on reconnaissance provided; it gave him something to do rather than watch her come home. He liked to believe he’d been raised with some manners, and it only felt wrong not to let her have at least some intimacy to live these moments of her life—and from what glances he allowed himself when he stood on distant vantage points, any real proximity might have overwhelmed him. She took in her surroundings with almost childish wonderment, with unbridled joy and relief; and then she would see something familiar, or perhaps something that was everything but—a broken statue, a glint of Garlean steel—and loss would flash across her face.

Still, she was strong, and hurt never prevailed over her for long. She was smiling again under the bright sky, some distance ahead on the path, as Sairsel hopped down from a high outcropping of rock to give his report. They were more than halfway to Ala Gannha, by now, and the sun had the height of midday; its warmth bled through the air enough that they had tied their coats around their waists. 

Lyse's eagerness was contagious: Meffrid's easy smile betrayed his high spirits even when he tried to play the part of the responsible captain as Sairsel updated his report.

“Good. Very good. I’ll never tire of hearing about an absence of imperial patrols,” he said, clapping Sairsel on the back again. He was getting into the habit of putting a hand to the nape of Sairsel’s neck and giving a fond squeeze and a shake—and that, Sairsel never tired of. “You’re doing good work.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Sairsel quipped, and almost immediately regretted it. Had he gone too far in the familiarity? Sure, he’d helped Meffrid months ago, but—

“I’m not surprised at all,” Meffrid said, genuine. “And if I were, it would only be pleasantly so. I couldn’t have been sure what to expect, could I? This isn't exactly the Shroud.”

Meffrid extended his hands, designating the Peaks as a whole: the dusty roads, the rock, the open ground where the hardiest trees could only sparsely grow. Scrunching one eye closed against the glare of the sun, Sairsel glanced around, and up towards the sky.

“No, this isn’t the Wood,” Sairsel said. “Maybe if this were right after we’d met, I would be a proper nuisance, but I learned a lot in Thanalan. And I talked with some of the others—the scouts and the rangers and the skirmishers, and all that lot. M’naago knows this place like the back of her hand, doesn't she?”

Meffrid nodded. “Oh, aye.” Lyse’s voice called to them expectantly, and he shared an almost conspiratorial smile with Sairsel. “And I'm sure you will, too, in no time.”

Such a small thing, faith could be. Still, those words—unassuming as they were—remained with Sairsel. If Meffrid believed he could know this land even half as well as someone like M’naago did, then perhaps he had a place, too.


	5. Chapter 5

When they camped, Meffrid would often sit at the fire and sing as stars began to fill the sky. He never dared to properly raise his voice; it was little more than a breathy sort of hum that filled the silence with something deep and worn, but never devoid of life or hope. By now, the tune was familiar: one Sairsel had heard in the Reach, on strings and voices—once, on a trumpet—but never dared to ask after.

Mostly because he was afraid of reminding them all that he was an outsider when he could now find himself believing, a bit more every day, that he wasn’t. But Meffrid—Meffrid had never done anything but welcome him, even before Sairsel had told him about his mother. And then, he’d only listened with kindness, and told him he was a son of Ala Mhigo.

“It was kindness, aye, and maybe the Spinner’s hand that brought you to us that day, in the Shroud,” he’d said, “but maybe it was your Mhigan blood, too. Guiding your heart.”

He’d smiled at him, then, and Sairsel had found himself smiling back.

Son of Ala Mhigo or not, his disposition was still no different. He was growing braver—_fiercer,_ Morgana had said before they separated in Castrum Oriens—and better at mimicking his mother’s boldness when it came to talking back, but talking at all was entirely different. And it was worse when it came to purposely drawing the attention of someone he admired; by the time he worked up the courage to interrupt Meffrid, he already felt breathless.

“You sing that song a lot,” Sairsel said, “would—”

“Do you want me to stop?” Meffrid asked, raising an eyebrow.

Sairsel shook his head and waved his hands, already halfway to frantic. “Wh— no!” he said. “I really didn’t say that to make you stop. I only meant—”

Meffrid smiled. It was then that Sairsel noticed his hands moving, turning over something small—wood?—in a manner that had more to it than mere idleness. 

“You wonder what it is?”

“Aye.”

“_The Measure of His Reach,_ it’s called. It’s our song,” Meffrid said, his gaze briefly falling to his hands before glancing back up at Sairsel. “With those words, at the very least. The imperials have tried to make it their own—so if you’re going to sing it outside the Reach, better make it hard to hear the words. Especially if you’re in Resistance colours. Makes it harder to pretend you’re singing for the glory of the Empire.”

“Oh,” Sairsel said. His face fell into a thoughtful frown.

“It’s a risk to take, but everything is, these days. I’d rather die with pride in my heart than live singing their words like they own us.”

“You could not sing at all,” Sairsel pointed out, though he didn’t really believe in the sentiment. As soon as the words left his mouth, he vividly imagined thumping his head against the nearest rock.

“I could also not fight at all. What’s freedom without a little risk, hey?” Meffrid said, nudging Sairsel’s arm with his elbow. His smile was soft around the edges, not quite as steady as it could be—but Meffrid’s faith never wavered. “Every small thing—it ends up mattering, Sairsel. Sometimes it’s a supply run going right. Sometimes it’s snatching intelligence from under the imperials’ noses. And sometimes, it’s just singing a song that reminds us who we were—who we still are, no matter what. Reminds us why we fight.”

Sairsel bit hard on the inside of his cheek, looking up towards the star-speckled sky as though it might quell the rising tide within his chest. Beside him, Meffrid kept on trailing the pad of his thumb against the bit of wood in his hands, only closing his fingers fully around it when Sairsel’s gaze moved back towards him.

“Would you teach it to me?” Sairsel asked quietly. “So that I can sing it with the right words.”

“Of course,” Meffrid said, nudging him again. “Maybe you can sing it when we liberate Ala Mhigo, make a proper bard of yourself. And make your Gridanian ancestors spin in their graves.”

Sairsel snorted. “I’m no bard,” he said, and focused on what little aether he could manipulate, as Aoife had taught him: like reaching into the pantry for that last biscuit, she’d said, except that the biscuit was a lute. Once it was in his hands, he strummed the strings once, and raised a finger pointedly. “I have a friend who is. Just because I’m an archer and I like singing—when no one hears me—”

“And Gridanian.”

“Forestborn,” Sairsel corrected.

Meffrid smiled, and Sairsel began to pluck away at what he remembered of the melody—and ever so quietly, like sharing a secret, Meffrid taught him to sing the beating heart of Gyr Abania.


	6. Chapter 6

“How are you acclimating?”

Sairsel shrugged stiffly. “Would you ask anyone else in Leofric’s unit that?”

“No,” Morgana said without hesitation. “I have only the one son in that unit, so I am asking him.”

Something in his mother had changed since Baelsar’s Wall—to say she had softened or warmed to him would have been a grand overstatement, but she was different. As though some walls of her own had been knocked down; whether it was the loss and betrayal of a man she had believed in, the abject failure of the operation, or the simple fact that she got to stand upon Gyr Abanian soil, Sairsel wasn’t certain. He appreciated the change, of course, but he wished it hadn’t taken her believing that he was dead for the ice around them to begin to melt. 

And, much as it shamed him to even think it after having spent his life without a mother, he felt as though he’d finally been breathing his own air since they had separated in East End. Without her presence, her gaze, her weight, he had been able to begin to make sense of what the Resistance meant to him and him alone, to make something of what it was for him to be Ala Mhigan without all of it passing through what it meant to be the son of Morgana Arroway.

Now that she’d returned, he thought—with no lack of guilt for wanting such a separation—that perhaps one was intrinsically tied to the other. 

“It’s been going well enough. I prefer it here to Little Ala Mhigo.”

Morgana showed a hint of a smile. “That doesn’t surprise me. More green, aye?” she asked, then laid her wrist against the pommel of her sword as she looked around. “Is your unit captain satisfied with you?”

She almost never referred to Leofric by name if she could help it; the way she regarded him could only be described as wary, and Sairsel was beginning to understand that it was protectiveness. Part of him wanted to reassure her that she had no impropriety to fear, but that would require, at the very least, hinting at what had already transpired—and Sairsel had no particular desire to broach the subject of men with his mother.

“I haven’t been with my unit much of late,” Sairsel said, clearing his throat and straightening his spine. “I spent most of my time since I got here doing reconnaissance work under Meffrid. He asks for me personally.”

“Meffrid?” Morgana asked, raising her eyebrows. Childishly, perhaps, Sairsel enjoyed the pleasant surprise on her face; of course she hadn’t expected him to be able to make something of himself on his own. “He’s one of Conrad’s best. How did you come by that?”

“I told you when we met that I’d helped some members of the Resistance back in the Twelveswood before, didn’t I? Meffrid was their captain.”

Something in her eyes shifted; they narrowed and softened at the same time. “That’s good. That’s very good. I’m glad to hear you continue to earn your place.”

“What,” Sairsel said, regarding her with an expression that allowed no quarter; something he had learned from her. He didn’t know how much of it was teasing and how much was genuine. “You didn’t think I was capable of it?”

“No, I didn’t say—”

“Oi, Sairsel,” called Meffrid’s voice off to his right—always the voice of an equal. Meffrid never commanded; Sairsel liked that about him. He waved a roll of parchment in his hand. “Mind helping me with this map? I can’t plan this route in any way that I like.”

“Time to earn my place some more,” Sairsel said to his mother, perhaps too harsh in his sarcasm. Morgana gave him a satisfied nod and waved him off; he regretted how stiffly he turned away.

He didn’t mean to antagonize her, really, and neither did he expect that she was trying to be as abrasive as she had been with him before, especially now. Still, he struggled not to respond in kind, even if the attitude was needlessly preemptive, after the time he had spent learning it from her. As he followed Meffrid to a nearby table—a slab of wood mounted low on a number of stacked boxes—he tuned his mind to the tension in his shoulders, releasing it, trying to slip back into the ease he felt at Meffrid’s side. Breathing his own air.

“That was your mother—Morgana, aye?” Meffrid asked, smoothing his hands over the map. Without even needing him to ask, Sairsel reached out to hold down a corner, while Meffrid laid three fingers against the opposite.

“You know her?”

Meffrid smiled. “I know of her. She’s been with the Resistance a long while, and even before that—the Coliseum, the Griffin’s Talons. People like her make a mark. You’re lucky you were able to return to Gyr Abania together.”

Much as Sairsel wanted to complain about her like a little boy, Meffrid was right. The fates had been unfathomably kind, after ripping so many families apart—including the family they might have shared—if only in bringing them together. That they should have both survived the Griffin was a boon for which Sairsel knew he should be thanking the Twelve every day, but he never could bring himself to speak to them as though they had ever done anything for him.

“I know,” he said. “The Spinner has been working herself to the bone.”

“It’s a good thing to cherish, my friend,” Meffrid said, clapping him affectionaly on the back. He kept his hand on Sairsel’s shoulder long enough to give it a squeeze, then motioned to a spot on the map, and launched back into the subject of supply routes with little more ceremony.

Sairsel liked that about him. Much as Meffrid had a knack for wearing himself to the bone with concern for his people, he never wasted time or words. His devotion fell to the right places. Twice as they pored over the map did Sairsel look up, studying the sharp focus in Meffrid’s eyes; the weary, kind lines of his face. Something about his admiration for Meffrid felt almost boyish—Sairsel was aware of that—but no one else in the Resistance seemed to draw it from him the way Meffrid did. 

When they were done, Meffrid clapped Sairsel’s back again, satisfied with their routes, and went off under gathering storm clouds to take the plans to Conrad. It was only a matter of hours, then, before Sairsel would come to think that the Spinner had perhaps had enough of keeping so many threads of his life intact.

*******

This time, when Sairsel fought amidst chaos and flames, there was nothing in them to be celebrated. At Baelsar’s Wall, there had been triumph; there had been _choice,_ a chaos of their own making; they had been taking something back that was theirs.

Now, the imperials only took. The flames of magitek artillery choked all the peace out of their sanctuary, taking away in minutes something that had been preserved for decades, and the sky answered with sharp purple-white lightning. Still, Rhalgar only watched. He could only watch as the Resistance died with his name on their lips—the same broken cries Sairsel had heard in a fog as he lay at Ilberd’s feet.

It took him almost all he had not to sink down and drown in it; it took him everything else just to stay alive. He clutched his bow like it would keep him afloat and ran—not away from the fray, but into the smoke, his fingers and boots scraping on rock as he climbed to a vantage. Barely high enough, but it had to be enough. He had to be enough.

_Aim quick. Strike true._ Three, eight, eleven arrows. The fires blinded him, the beams of light sparking from the imperials’ arms too bright— _Between the plates, through the circuits. Cover the ones who can really fight._ Fourteen. Twenty.

“I want that fucking archer dead!” bellowed a woman’s voice, her accent so thickly Mhigan that Sairsel didn’t realize it came from an imperial until a bullet whizzed past his left ear. With shaking legs, he jumped down from his vantage and rolled away just before the cannon blast hit where he’d been standing, burning at his back as he scrambled to his feet.

He threw himself into the smoke to disappear, the way the skirmishers had showed him. Bullets and magitek blasts still burst through the air—it was endless, a chorus of explosions and screams and slashing steel—but no longer _at_ him. Still, the woman in black saw him: she advanced, cutting down every Resistance fighter in her path with ease, dressed in some fading memory of Gyr Abanian styles plated with Garlean blacks.

It was only for a breath, for two footsteps, but Sairsel felt himself become prey. Her blade was relentless; he knew there was no surviving it, not when so many with more skill and strength than he could ever dream of having lay dead in her wake.

Then he heard Meffrid’s voice. “Sairsel!”

In the tumult, Meffrid stood as a titan. He challenged the imperial with a low growl that seemed to shake the earth, halting her advance towards Sairsel; their blades clashed with flashes of steel. They met blow for blow. Meffrid’s rage bled into every stroke of his sword. Just beyond him, Sairsel’s eyes caught a flash of metal, and the arrow was already nocked to his bowstring as an imperial aimed his gun, the bullet meant for Meffrid.

The man fell. Meffrid grunted, blood splashing from his mouth into the sand as the Ala Mhigan imperial cracked the hilt of her sword against his jaw. He spat red at her feet.

“Traitor! Kinslayer!”

Her arms, her neck, her belly, her legs; she was nowhere near as unprotected as the rest, a target full of weak points for Sairsel’s arrow to strike. Briefly, he wondered if Meffrid would see dishonour in Sairsel shooting her while she was engaged solely with him—but he was prepared to accept any scorn if it meant they could both live through this hell. 

He reached back. His fingers grasped only air—and panic rose in his belly. It was wrong, it couldn’t be, he’d _counted,_ he _always_ counted—

“You are no kin of mine,” the woman said, launching forward with a slash that passed through Meffrid as quickly as the lightning that split the sky in two.

Meffrid staggered back with a quiet gasp as blood spilled from his belly and dripped onto the ground. Sairsel watched him drop to his knees, so still, and Meffrid’s name tore through his throat in a scream, joining the thunder of Lyse’s.

Sairsel didn’t see her. He didn’t see the fighting around them. All he saw was the spear that lay on the ground to his left, a mere few steps from the imperial. He tossed his bow aside, running forward with burning lungs, gripped the lance with both hands, made to strike with the most savage thrust he could muster— 

Strong arms locked around his waist and stopped him, pulling him back so swiftly that his boots scraped in the dirt. He thrashed and swore and—

“You’ll get yourself killed,” hissed his mother’s voice in his ear. “Is that what you want?”

“Let me go!” Sairsel howled, tears stinging his eyes. “Let me— I’m going to— Meffrid!”

Lyse was a blur of crimson as she unleashed her fury on the imperial. Sairsel could only struggle in Morgana’s hold, his rage so consuming it made the corners of his vision darken and his entire body shake. She kept on dragging him back, far from Lyse and the imperial, far from the looming figure of the viceroy, far from Meffrid. To safety—or some semblance of it.

He cursed and struggled so much against Morgana—almost freeing himself—that she had to strike the back of his neck with the hilt of a dagger to get him still. If only for a moment, everything faded.

“I’m sorry, boy,” he heard her say as she lowered him to the ground.

She was gone. Sairsel shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut to clear his vision. His head swam, and his limbs moved as though through mud, but the urgency was not long in returning. Every inch of him, inside and out, seemed to burn. When he managed to drag himself to his feet, the imperials were gone, as quickly as the shadows of death had descended with them.

There were bodies everywhere; wounded and dying and dead. Sairsel ran for Meffrid, falling to his knees beside him with a foolish shred of hope still flickering inside him like guttering embers, burning him from the inside out. He grabbed Meffrid’s face, thumbs on his cheeks, wiped away a stain of blood from his skin as he shook him.

“Oi, oi,” he said, as though there was any word he could say that would reach him, “Meffrid. Please. _Please._”

His hand moved shakily down to the wide, open gash in Meffrid’s belly. The blood was still hot on him, growing cold and sticky on Sairsel’s hand in the harsh night air; all the life that was left of him, ebbing out. Sairsel could almost taste it, sickeningly bitter on his tongue and sharp as the blade that had cut him open.

The breath was already long gone from his lungs, but Sairsel couldn’t let go. He slipped an arm under Meffrid’s shoulders and drew him close and clutched his hand, pressing his forehead to his. When he squeezed his eyes shut, he could see Meffrid’s weary smile, his anger moments before the imperial hound struck him down.

His bloodied fingers tightened even more around Meffrid’s hand as he squeezed his eyes shut, holding onto him as though it might keep him from slipping away. The first sob rose from his chest like a panic, stripping him down to nothing.

“Fuck,” he wailed from between gritted teeth, his voice so choked and raw it was barely a sound. 

He didn’t know how not to make it ache, how not to let it tear him to shreds. The grief and the shock burrowed deep into him, turning him to stone beside Meffrid—Meffrid’s corpse—as Rhalgr stood high above them, silent and watching. 

No one came near them; not for a very long while. There were too many wounded, and many more dead—and what was one more grave? Sairsel had long since fallen still and silent when a hand touched his shoulder, only to draw back as he flinched.

“Sairsel,” said Morgana’s voice, so distant it may as well have been underwater.

The sound of his own name shot through his veins so coldly that it sent a shiver down Sairsel’s spine; the last time he’d heard it had been in Meffrid’s voice, heavy and urgent. He couldn’t bring himself to answer to it.

“I’m sorry, lad.” Her hand returned to his shoulder as she crouched beside him, the other coming to his wrist. “You need to let go.”

He’d been wrong to think he had no tears left to cry. The sorrow closed around his throat again at the mere thought of leaving Meffrid behind, letting him be nothing but a dead man. He shook his head, gritting his teeth. 

“Do you want to stay with him while he rots in the sun?” Morgana asked, not unkindly—but her words cut. “Is that what he deserves?”

“He deserves to be alive,” Sairsel said, his voice scraping at the back of his throat. Despite it all, he didn’t have the strength to fight as Morgana pried his fingers from Meffrid’s hand.

“He’s not. He’s gone, Sairsel. He died fighting and it’s better than dying beaten and on his knees. You sitting here—”

“I know it won’t change anything,” Sairsel said, jagged and broken. If he’d just had one arrow, if his quiver hadn’t been empty— 

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to see something, _anything_ that wasn’t Meffrid falling to his knees. “Just leave me be. I’ll—I’ll get him with the others.”

“You’re sure?”

Sairsel sniffed and didn’t look at her, laying a shaky hand on Meffrid’s brow ever so gently. “I’ve gone my whole life without you. I can do this on my own.”

He had to do it on his own; he didn’t know how to share his grief with her, and the simple truth of it was that he didn’t want to. These last moments with Meffrid had to be his and no one else’s.

He sat stroking his thumb over Meffrid’s brow in silence—barely at home in his own body—until he heard Morgana’s footsteps recede and fade into the quiet. This time, when she was gone, he did not breathe any easier; still he forced himself to move, to pull the air into his lungs and remind himself that he yet lived. It was too early to think of legacies, of carrying on, of making Meffrid proud while he waited for kith and kin on the shores of the next world. For now, Sairsel contented himself with burying the guilt at least long enough to get his body with the others.

It was like ripping a part of himself away, but Sairsel drew back from Meffrid. He wished it could find the words, find his voice—tell Meffrid, even not knowing whether he could hear his voice, that he was his brother. That he would sorely miss his kind brand of courage. That he would fight to his last breath, too, to see his dream of a free Ala Mhigo realized. No sound came; it felt as though the dirt of a grave filled his throat, weighed down his tongue.

So he took his hand. When his fingers slipped into the loose grip of Meffrid’s fist, Sairsel felt wood against his fingertips. He opened Meffrid’s hand, pulled from it the small charm he’d held as he died: the faces of a woman and a child stared at him, their likeness carved into stillness, and Sairsel’s vision blurred with tears before he could make out the details of it. He squeezed the charm until he realized his hand was shaking, that his grip on it was so tight the ridges of the wood dug into his scars through the fabric of his gloves. The hard press of it hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, half a sob. “Meffrid, I’m sorry.”

Meffrid was silent. Knuckling at the traces of fresh tears on his cheeks, Sairsel sniffled and let out a shaky sigh, then carefully slipped the charm into a pocket he’d sewn into his jacket, near his heart. _I’ll keep this safe for you,_ he thought. He took Meffrid’s sword, too—vowed to let it drink the blood of imperials until Ala Mhigo would be free—and left his own sword with Meffrid, laying both of his hands over the hilt. It had always been too heavy for him.

“He looks like those great warriors in the tombs,” M’naago said from behind Sairsel as he got to his feet again, his legs shaking as much as her voice trembled. She swallowed a whimper of emotion.

“I’ve never seen them,” Sairsel said, stupidly.

“Oh,” M’naago said, and then she pulled him into a crushing hug that, even with her wounded, made him ache inside and out. Her voice was so quiet as she spoke against his chest that it took him a few heartbeats to understand. “I’ll have to show you sometime.”

It wasn’t until they stood in one of those tombs, cold and rocky and silent, that Sairsel showed M’naago the charm.


	7. Chapter 7

“Thought you were training to be a pikeman,” said Leofric, leaning against a tree as he regarded Sairsel—the blood and ichor staining his blade, his clothes, his face. He considered their surroundings, too, and thumbed idly at the scar below his lip. “Are you tryin’ to put the Alliance watchmen out of a job by decimating every living thing around here?”

Sairsel adjusted his grip on his sword—Meffrid’s sword. “I’m training,” he said stiffly. “And I’m being careful; I’m only killing the disruptive ones. Won’t put the forest out of balance.”

“Are you in balance?”

Of all the moments to become astute, Sairsel wished Leofric hadn’t picked this one. He had better things to do than to answer to his captain while the rest of the unit was off-duty, for one; and he hadn’t yet found a way not to be so raw, even as the weeks passed, which meant it was a struggle not to bristle at this sort of razor-sharp, prickling attention. He sighed, picked up a fallen leaf off the ground, wiped the blade clean with it.

“I’m standing on my own two feet. That’s balance enough.”

Leofric made a noise at the back of his throat that was not exactly enthusiastic agreement. “I won’t have a blood-frenzied boy in my unit endangering himself and the rest of us because he can’t handle loss.”

“I can handle it,” Sairsel snapped. “I’m still as capable as I was before the Reach, and after how I picked off that patrol over _three hours_ the other day, you should know I haven’t forgotten to be patient.”

“But you’re angry.”

Sairsel stomped closer to to Leofric, his voice bursting through the quiet of the forest. “Of course I’m fucking angry! Were you even there, Leofric? Why aren’t you angry?”

“I am angry,” Leofric said, low. His face had darkened, and now he stood straight, tapping a finger against Sairsel’s chest. “But I know how to wield it, and I want you angry the right way, too. You don’t grab a sword by the blade.”

“I’ve got it right,” Sairsel said.

Leofric glanced down at Meffrid’s sword in his hand, tipping the blade up with a finger against the sharp edge—slow and careful. “Are you really training, or just looking for things to keep killing?”

The words sent a chill down Sairsel’s spine. All his life, he’d walked through the Wood knowing just how much he could take, knowing to offer quiet words of gratitude in prayer when he did. It had been a long while since he’d given any thanks, or any thought at all towards hurting, towards killing. In truth, what he wanted now was to keep the blood singing in his veins, because it drowned out the rest; he wanted his body to ache, because it got his anger to fade.

But the question was a necessary one.

“I’m training,” he said firmly, hoping it might solidify his own thoughts. “My sword-skill needs it. I need to be able to hold my own.”

“You said swords weren’t right in your hand.”

Sairsel attempted a meager smile. “That’s because I favour my left,” he said, and Leofric smirked. He looked down at Meffrid’s sword once more. “I think I’m starting to understand them better.”

“That so?”

“Aye,” Sairsel said with a nod. “It’s been getting lighter. Every time an imperial falls, the burden’s less.”

Slowly, Leofric’s smile faded, and doubt crawled within the spaces of Sairsel’s certainty. What part of this could be wrong? He was finally learning, finally becoming strong enough to matter in the fight against the Empire—

And then he realized that Leofric’s expression was not disapproval. Not quite satisfaction or pride, perhaps—a part of Sairsel desperately wished it were so—but understanding, at the very least. He saw the path that lay before them, before Sairsel, and knew that he must walk it.

Standing close, Leofric reached out and grabbed Sairsel under his jaw, making certain that he wouldn’t pull his gaze away. “Just promise me one thing, Sairsel,” Leofric said. “Don’t die.”

“That’s not a promise anyone can make.”

“It’s not a promise everyone can keep,” Leofric corrected, shaking his head. “But you have to make it. Because then you remember.”

Sairsel held his gaze. Despite everything, he didn’t want to die. He remembered the fear and sorrow whenever the scar on his chest throbbed with that dull ache, never forgetting the unrelenting sharpness of the Griffin’s sword. He couldn’t forget how tightly Morgana’s arms had held him when he crossed Baelsar’s Wall alive and whole.

And he’d made a promise, already, even if not with words—a promise for a dream to be realized.

“I promise,” he said, and not just to Leofric.

By nightfall, Leofric’s face was shifting in his mind; the words he’d spoken thrummed like a different string every time. _Don’t die,_ said Meffrid’s voice. _Don’t die,_ said Morgana’s. _Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t—_ Ashelia, Madelaine, his sister and his father and—

His own voice, too.


	8. Chapter 8

To say that the Lochs had Sairsel breathless was an understatement. It had everyone breathless, to begin with; no one who crossed Castrum Abania, whether stepping onto the soil which bore Ala Mhigo for the first time in their lives or in twenty years, stood unaffected by the sight of the city—a mountain bared by flatlands against the burning sky. Salt in the air; the sun like fire on the horizon, bleeding into every rock and stone. The glittering waters of Loch Seld in the distance, more precious than any diamond.

There was the beauty of the place, the taste of it on the wind, and then there was the feeling of a storm crashing through the whole of Porta Praetoria, constant and endless. Since Rhalgr’s Reach, no one would have shied away from calling the reality as it was: they were at war, now—but penetrating the last castrum made it palpable. They could gaze upon their final battlefield. They could feel the creeping of victory, or defeat.

At the Lochs, those whispers of war never stopped; how could they, when those whispers had become a constant cry?

In that ever-shifting, elated chaos, the only thing Sairsel could hope to quiet was his own mind—but he no longer knew how to find the silence. Battle loomed; every day, the strongest of them pushed closer and closer to stand at the doorstep of the Empire. They waited, they worked, they fought. Sairsel hunted, perhaps more in that short time than he ever had in his life, because soldiers needed to be fed.

It was the best he could do. And then, when night fell, he couldn’t sleep. It would be half a day yet after sunrise before his unit was to be deployed, and he knew he had best use this time resting, or preparing, at the very least—but his body was locked between restlessness and frozen fear. He hated to be afraid, but he was; every hour, at the very least, he swallowed the impulse to stand up and walk back through Castrum Abania, cross the Peaks and walk until he was in East End again, and smell the air of a forest again, and leave Baelsar’s Wall and all its horrors behind until he was home in the Wood, where he belonged.

But Ala Mhigo wouldn’t let him go—or perhaps he couldn’t let go of it, glittering in the distance as he sat upon the battlements of Porta Praetoria with a sword across his lap. At night, the shadows could almost make the stark white flags upon its walls seem different. When he closed his eyes, he could almost believe that M’naago had glamoured them, too: that the flashes of white were the shape of a griffin. But they wouldn’t need glamours if they won.

They would fly the Ala Mhigan flags themselves.

And then, the colour he saw didn’t belong to imperial flags. It was the Griffin’s cape, cut clear across the Gyr Abanian sky.

His fingers rose to the scar on his chest.

“Still hurt, does it?” 

Even when it was quiet, Morgana’s voice cut through the night like a blade. Sairsel jumped, but she said nothing—instead, she put a hand on his shoulder as she sat down beside him, straddling the battlement with a knee pulled up to her chest.

“I’m fine,” Sairsel said.

“No, you’re not. It always hurts. This?” Morgana asked, tapping the faded scars on her neck. “Older than you, and it’s never entirely stopped. Sometimes it’s in my head, I think, because you don’t forget. But it still aches sometimes.”

“Just the wound?”

It was a question he asked knowing the answer; she knew that he did. Months ago, she might have chosen to pretend otherwise, and simply walked away. Now, she stayed. She looked at the stars with her son.

“Everything,” she said.

Sairsel’s hand, still resting against his chest, crept up; his fingers touched the shard of crystal at his neck, ran it along the leather cord upon which it hung. Morgana had worn it for nigh on fifteen years before she left it with him.

“I’m afraid,” Sairsel said at last, keeping his voice as steady as he could.

“You’d be a fool if you weren’t. All that tripe about courting death the songs always go on about, it’s—it’s shite. Fighting means fighting death. You’re not fond of it. You have to hate it. To fear it. It’s the only way.”

Sairsel turned his head to look at Morgana, watching the lines of her face, the distance in her eyes as they followed the silhouette of Ala Mhigo in the sky. At first, he turned over her words in his mind; then he found his thoughts drifting past death and fear, only to settle on the city itself.

“Tomorrow, you’ll be going home.”

“Aye.”

“Will it—” he began, his courage slipping. Then he gripped it again: “Will it be strange, coming home with me? I mean, I know our units won't be fighting together, exactly, but—”

“I won’t be fighting with the Resistance,” said Morgana.

“I’m— What?” Sairsel asked, purely stammering. His mother’s words were so disarming that it took his mind several seconds to catch up. “I’m sorry, but—_what?_ You’ve been with the Resistance almost twenty years. I joined for _you._ And now you won’t be fighting? Who are you?”

“I won’t be fighting with the Resistance,” Morgana repeated, surprisingly calm and not nearly as cutting as she had a habit of being, “because I’ll be with the Flames’ Ala Mhigan Brigade.”

“The Flames.”

“The Ala Mhigan Brigade. We’re leading the vanguard.”

Saisel let out a breath as though he’d been holding it. “And you were planning on telling me this, what, ten minutes before their lot is going to march out?”

“I didn’t realize you were counting on me to hold your hand during the fighting.”

“I didn’t realize you were aiming to get yourself killed,” Sairsel shot back. There was truth in his insolence; after the words fell, he frowned, growing more serious. “Is that what it is? You’d rather die fighting to free Ala Mhigo than keep living after because there’ll be no fight left?”

Morgana scoffed. “I am not a tragic hero in an hour-long ballad, so no. I have no intention of dying tomorrow,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “But I want to be first through that gate. _Because_ I’ve been fighting for twenty years. It’s a smart way to use the Resistance, securing the Ala Mhigan Quarter, but it’s not enough for me. I want to fight the way I should have twenty years ago.”

“All right,” Sairsel said stiffly. The more seconds passed, the less he knew how he felt—not about her choice, but about how unburdened it made him. “I’ll fight with the Resistance. For the both of us.”

“Not just for me, then?” Morgana asked, watching him.

Sairsel shook his head. “Came for you. Stayed for me.”

“The old bear would be proud to hear you’re fighting for the right reasons.” 

To that, Sairsel could only hum in passive agreement. He looked down at Meffrid’s sword laid across his lap, pressed his bare palm to its hilt. “I just had to cross the Wall understand what it was I was fighting for, is all,” he said gently.

“Liberty or death,” Morgana said. To Sairsel, they were Lyse’s words—a rallying cry, one that burrowed deep into his bones with every passing day. He didn’t know what it meant to Morgana; didn’t even know she had gone to Coldhearth and seen the words, timeworn and faded, upon the bricks of an old home—into the very bones of Gyr Abania.

He nodded, swallowing around the fear; he thought of Meffrid, and knew that he would have said these words from the deepest reaches of his heart. “Liberty or death.”

It was, after all, for liberty that he had died.

*******

(“Do your lot take on irregulars?” Morgana had asked. “Or do you have to swear and salute and say ‘for coin and country’ as though there’s something at all inspiring about it?”

“I sense there’s another question underneath some of those knives.”

Then came a sigh, followed by a question asked pointedly so as not to sound like a question at all: “What if I wanted to fight with the Ala Mhigan Brigade.”

“I’d start by asking why you’d turn your back on the Resistance so close to the end.”

“I’m not turning my back on the Resistance. I’ve spoken with Commander Hext. The Resistance has my sword, has my blood, but— Well, let me ask you this: would the Bull of Ala Mhigo feel content with anything less than charging through the gates?”

She’d known the answer to that question even before she asked.

“No.”

“Neither am I.”

“You’d fall under my command.”

“Aye, I was able to work out that much, thank you. I should be able to tolerate it for a few hours. Heard you’re not bad at it.”

“You’re certain you don’t want—”

“I’m bloody certain, Raubahn, else I wouldn’t be standing here.” Another sigh. “I can’t be down there with the Resistance. If I am, I’ll— I won’t be able to stop looking for him. Not after Baelsar’s Wall. Every moment of the fight, looking over my shoulder, trying to find my son in the crowd. If I’m tempted to fight for the both of us, I’ll get us both killed.”

Her words had found only a searching frown.

“Do you not have faith in the lad?”

She had more faith in Sairsel than she ever thought she might when he came to her, scrawny and naïve, and pretended he had no loyalty left for Ashelia Riot’s Riskbreakers to join the Resistance. 

So she’d shaken her head, and admitted, as though she tasted broken shards of steel: “It’s in myself I don’t have faith.”)


	9. Chapter 9

In the morning, the chaos was worse; and it grew by the hour. Commanders from all manner of companies—the Eorzean Alliance’s, the adventurers’—bellowed orders left and right: Sairsel trained his ears, in the din, to pick up Ala Mhigan accents above all. Still, there was something distracting about the airy lilting of the Gridanians’ words, as though they brought with them the rustling of leaves from the Wood. Dully, Sairsel ached—only for a breath, only like an echo, but every time. He focused on the sharp ice of the Ishgardian voices, thought of how Madelaine’s tongue had shifted to match theirs, picked up the rolling roars of a Lominsan. When he heard orders for the Flames, he turned his head towards the voice.

Ala Mhigan.

As far as he knew, General Aldynn was a good man. He had the natural charisma to inspire loyalty in hundreds, the strength to survive this long, the tactical talent—Sairsel supposed—to lead adopted forces of a foreign land as well as his own people. Something about him had the same pull as Meffrid had, the same solid kindness. Like Ashelia, like Lyse. Sairsel would have followed any of them; hells, a part of him still felt like half a turncoat for fighting among the ranks of the Resistance when he could have stood with the Riskbreakers—and he’d been watching Porta Praetoria for a glance of the Grand Steward, or A’zaela, or _anyone_ familiar all morning.

But it still barely made sense to know that Morgana would fight along the Flames, and not with her people. He wondered if it was that she saw ghosts in the Resistance; Leofric had told him with a surprisingly sympathetic look that none of her unit had survived Baelsar’s Wall. Since then, she’d been filling the roles that needed it, never falling back into a command of her own. In his grief, he’d been vaguely aware of her taking on some of Meffrid’s responsibilities during Lyse’s absence. She’d never seemed to sit still.

And now, the Flames’ Ala Mhigan Brigade gathered at the foot of the steps, ready to march on the city while the Grand Companies prepared for the initial assult. No sitting still for the vanguard.

“Oi.”

For a moment, her voice sounded almost like Ashelia’s. Sairsel’s heart very nearly skipped a beat as his head snapped back to look at Morgana, her hair tied high, braids pulling back the sides—revealing the grey that was most obvious just above her ears. She bore two swords: one blade with the familiar curve of the Ala Mhigan scimitar, the other long and slender and a bright violet reminiscent of the griffin banners flown all through Porta Praetoria. Utterly undauntable, even in armour that had more of a mercenary or a gladiator’s carefully selected, distinctive styles than a proper soldier’s.

“Ready to go to war?” Sairsel asked.

“Aye.”

He fiddled with the fabric around his hands. “Is this the part where we say goodbye?”

“I’m not saying goodbye,” Morgana said sharply. She glanced down at the sword he wore. “Are you not fighting with the bow or lance at all?”

“Bow, yes; still the most useful I can be. Lance, no. My sword-skill’s gotten better.”

And he would fight for Ala Mhigo with Meffrid’s sword in his hand, no matter what. Regardless of whether Morgana understood—Sairsel had given up on trying to work out what she thought, and on caring about it—she nodded.

“My brother wasn’t all that talented with a sword, either, if I’m honest. But he was strong,” she said as she glanced back up at his face. “Remember that today, Sairsel. You’re not just my son, or your father’s. You’re Gotwin’s nephew—this is his legacy you’re fighting for, too. Our family’s.”

Too many legacies to count. If he was to survive, he’d have to empty his mind of them—Gotwin, Morgana, Ashelia, Meffrid. Curtis Hext, Conrad Kemp, Ilberd Feare. Hundreds, thousands more. He knew so few of them, but he could forget none. His heart wouldn’t; not while standing upon this ground.

“I will.”

“You’ll fight well.”

Sairsel nodded. “So will you.”

Stiffly, Morgana reached for him: she hooked her arm around his neck, pressed a hand to the back of his head as she touched her brow to his, eyes closing. He closed his eyes, too, and breathed. Salt and storm on the air.

When she tore herself away, she was silent, though her lips were stiff around words that wouldn’t come. Sairsel swallowed and forced his own voice.

“See you in Ala Mhigo,” he said. Only a matter of hours; win or lose. They would see each other there, or they wouldn’t.

“Aye. In our Ala Mhigo,” she said, and turned away as though the horns of war were at her heel.

*******

Blood trickled down the side of Sairsel’s face; he didn’t know whether it was his or someone else’s. In the fight, he’d vaguely been aware of the spray that had hit him when his blade had caught in the vulnerable spaces between the bottom of an imperial’s helm and the top of his armour. He’d been vaguely aware of pain throbbing above his eyebrow when debris from a magitek blast had burst at his right side. Everything seemed to come into his awareness only as a blur, like a dream shifting and rewriting itself and wiping away what had passed—a dream filled with screaming and the ringing of blades and shrill magic and heavy magitek, the smell of blood and smoke and death.

So long as the blood didn’t get into his eyes, he didn’t care. The only thing for which he had utter clarity was the number of arrows in his quiver. This time, he didn’t just keep count: he repeated the numbers in his mind like a chant, slipping it in the spaces between the war cries and the paeans that had him singing his throat raw, screaming words almost bare of melody with the rest of his unit.

The Resistance, even after every loss, after every fallen warrior, seemed to flood the streets of the Ala Mhigan quarter, breaking down the imperials’ barriers with thaumaturges from their own ranks and those of the companies. They made barriers of their own, too, cutting off the imperials from the civilians on every block. Sairsel kept to his orders at finding high ground, covering his unit, keeping an eye ahead at the enemy’s movements. Leofric’s blade flashed like a green serpent below, and Sairsel kept to it like a beacon.

He did not think of Morgana, fighting in the city above with the vanguard, clearing a path for the strongest of them. Cutting down, cutting through to the palace. Fighting alongside brothers and sisters who were strangers.

In the palace, her eyes caught a flash of white hair. Even if she had looked for Ashelia Riot through the battle, she would have never found the cherry blossom pink she expected; instead, she looked like a shadow of herself—a vengeful, righteous shade, but a shade nonetheless. Skinny as the girl with bloody knees in Little Ala Mhigo, as the young woman who’d traipsed off with the Corpse Brigade.

Morgana let out a battle roar worthy of the bloodsands and thumped the flat of her blade against her shield. “Face me, you bloody worms!”

She danced around the mob that turned to her as the shade and her comrades passed through the hall unseen, cut down all in reach of her blade. Breathless, she whipped around, looking for Raubahn’s towering shape, and ran to his back—as they had fought once, young and lost, under harsh lights and the bellowing of a crowd. As another imperial unit poured in through the hall, black bathed in oblique blades of sunlight, she turned to his side and yelled above the noise, shoving at his shoulder.

“They’re going to get through,” she said, the bloodied point of her sword designating Riot’s party running ahead. She threw aside her shield. “Cover them.”

He opened his mouth, and she unsheathed Gotwin’s scimitar with her left hand, sunlight catching the sharp black edge. “I’ve got this,” she said, twirling it once. “We’ve got this. Go.”

As Raubahn charged ahead, Morgana turned and stood with the three of her countrymen who had pushed through while the rest of the brigade fanned out through the palace. “We hold the line,” said Brida, the unit commander.

The imperials crashed in with a magitek armour at their backs like an all-consuming tide. It wasn’t long before Morgana was screaming.

Sairsel did not hear her voice—but he heard the horn bursting like a clap of thunder through the air, as though it rent the sky in half. There were three arrows left in his quiver and his entire body shook and the first thing he noticed as the battle faltered with hesitation was that the sun was setting, casting pinks and oranges across the clouds. Then came the second blast from the horn.

He heard Leofric’s voice to his right, quiet at first. “He’s dead. We won,” he said. Then again, louder, echoing through the street: “We won.”

It rose through them like a murmur, then like a chant, and Leofric brandished his sword towards the sky and roared: “_Ala Mhigo!_”

Sairsel’s arms dropped at his sides, his shoulders sagging from the shock; the noise rumbled in his ears as freedom fighters screamed and whooped and wept, and his own breath fluttered in his chest. Much as the battle had been interlocking seconds of chaos all weaved together into something he could scarcely pick apart, this new disarray of victory spread itself so wide across the reaches of his mind that it seemed unreal. Leofric was the only fixed point, even as he moved: in freedom, he shone like a beacon, his smile unbreakable even as their unit closed in around the imperial soldiers who hadn’t simply run as the horn sounded their defeat.

It wasn’t until he heard the clattering of weapons—swords and lances and bows falling to the ground like drops of rain—that Sairsel began to smile. The viceroy was dead. The XIIth Imperial Legion was surrendering. Moving as though through water, he slung his bow across his shoulder, slipped the arrow in his hand back into his quiver, and jogged back to his unit. 

Leofric caught him in passing. “We won,” he said again, holding him at arm’s length with both hands on Sairsel’s shoulders before pulling him in and planting an elated kiss on his lips. Sairsel realized he was laughing as Leofric looked at the rest of the unit, and at a fair-skinned man in a Flames uniform. “By Rhalgr’s cock, I could kiss every last one of you. Aye, even you, Ul’dahn.”

The Flames officer responded by scoffing and throwing Leofric a length of rope for the surrendered imperials. Before long, the Resistance had gathered up their prisoners; civilians began to trickle back into the streets, adding to the vibrant commotion as they walked the streets no longer governed by the Empire for the first time in twenty years.

There were those who mourned their dead, too. Resistance fighters who had died for liberty, wounded pulled to the sides for urgent healing who watched their victory through a haze of pain or barely had a notion of what was unfolding around them; it was then that Sairsel felt the pull of reality past the overwhelming rush of celebration. His eyes searched frantically for the nearest Flame uniform.

“Oi,” he called, rushing past Leofric at the fair-skinned Ul’dahn from before who was gathering imperial weapons from the street. “Is there word of the Ala Mhigan Brigade?”

The Flame shook his head, and Sairsel’s heart dropped. “I’ve no clue, friend. I’m not on their shell. Last I heard, they were pressing the advance into the palace.”

“Thank you,” Sairsel said, halfway to breathless. If the viceroy was dead, then—they had succeeded. The vanguard had to be whole. Otherwise the Flame would have heard of it, surely, if—

He only had to turn towards Leofric to see him nodding his way before he even spoke. “Go. But keep your head on your shoulders; not all dogs have to sense to show their bellies,” he said, sharp and venomous as he glanced towards a bound imperial being shoved forward by a Resistance fighter. “Report back to me by nightfall.”

“I will. Thank you, Leofric,” Sairsel said, already running towards the steps that led up towards the palace.

“We won, Arroway!” Leofric called after him—as if he needed the reminder.

Sairsel flew past Resistance fighters and officers of all three Grand Companies and nearly barrelled into an Ishgardian knight; he heard a griffin loose a cry to or from the heavens, which the Ala Mhigans on the ground met with a swelling cheer; the sound of his footsteps was buried by chants of _Ala Mhigo!_ and _Liberty! Liberty or death!_ and _For the Reach!_—now no longer battle cries, but oaths for what was won. Countless names poured past Sairsel and receded like the swell of a tide as he moved deeper into the city: he heard Conrad Kemp’s and realized that they were the names of the dead.

_Please don’t make me say hers._

He was at the very edge of the Royal Menagerie when he saw her standing beside a bed of prim pink flowers that matched the sky—he thought fleetingly of Ashelia—with her right hand against gilded metal railing. Supporting herself, he realized: most of her left arm was wrapped in bandages, the flank of her armour singed black.

“Morgana,” he called, his voice wavering.

It didn’t matter that she was meant to be watching the leaders of an alliance gathering to consider the death of a tyrant; when Morgana heard her son’s voice, there was nothing else in the world that mattered. Even with one arm, she embraced him so tightly it made the scar on his chest ache again.

“Sairsel,” she said against his hair. Her whole body was trembling. No more words seemed to come.

So he spoke for her. “It’s over.” Then, in his clumsy Ala Mhigan: “Mother, you’re home.”

“We’re home.”

She pulled back, touching the side of his face with her hand, then glanced sideways at the two thin ranks forming on the side of the promenade, awaiting Commander Hext and the Warrior of Light. She tugged him along to fall in beside her on the line that could see over the edge of the Menagerie and toward the mountains, the Ala Mhigan Quarter sprawling below.

“Are you all right?” Sairsel whispered. Morgana stood at attention, but she was still shaking from head to toe. He took her right hand in his—her skin was ice, but her grip was firm.

“Magitek blast. A few small burns: nothing more. Field medic’s healed it some.”

He didn’t have time to ask after the meaning of “a few small burns” when spoken by a woman whom he’d heard referring to a countryman’s dismemberment as a flesh wound. The procession led by Lyse—a proud commander in crimson—marched forward, away from the fallen body of the viceroy.

From a bloodthirsty tyrant’s ending to their new beginning.

One by one, Resistance and Alliance alike saluted their leaders as they passed: Commander Hext, the Doman lord come all the way from across the seas to fight for them, the Scion boy and Ahtynwyb, too, a woman whom Sairsel had once witnessed sitting in a stream while in full plate—their Warrior of Light. And light indeed did she cast over the world.

Rather than salute with her good arm, Morgana opted to keep Sairsel’s hand tightly in hers. Out of the corner of his eye, Sairsel watched his mother smile at General Aldynn, strained by pain but open in a way that was unfamiliar to him. A former comrade—and opponent—on the bloodsands; now a true brother-in-arms. Short as his passing was, he smiled at her, too.

Morgana pulled at Sairsel again as they joined the back of the procession, gathering behind them; he found himself beside M’naago, her breath audible as the force of her emotions made it flutter in her chest. Wordlessly, they shared a glance—Sairsel felt his throat tighten as he thought of the last time they had stood alone together, in silent tombs where he gave away a piece of Meffrid to which he had been clinging—and touched foreheads.

It was as they stopped at the edge of the promenade that Morgana’s hand slipped from his. She was still shaking, and Sairsel brushed his fingers against her wrist, not daring to take it and wind her arm around his shoulders.

“You can lean on me. You’re free.”

He half expected her to look away and force herself to stand taller, but she dropped a heavy arm around his shoulders and rested some of her weight against him. She smelled like smoke. He raised a hand and laid it against hers, and she tilted her head down against his as if in answer.

Below, the Ala Mhigan Quarter was a sea of people. Horns blared a familiar note through the air twice, and Sairsel felt a sharp pang between his ribs—elation and sorrow were two edges of the same blade—as voices rose from below around them.

For the first time in twenty years, the free people of Ala Mhigo sang a hymn that belonged to them and them alone. And Sairsel sang, too: he sang with all the breath his lungs would muster, sang words that had weighed upon every inch of his soul since that quiet night where freedom had still seemed like half a dream that could fade away in the smoke of the campfire.

_Raise up your hands and voices; let fill your hearts with pride._

Sairsel wrapped his fingers around the hilt of Meffrid’s sword and didn’t let go as he sang the words Meffrid had taught him. Just ahead of him, Arenvald—the boy his age, the one who called himself _half-breed_ as though digging a blade between his own ribs—lifted a heavy standard high above his head, and the banner of the Resistance flew over Ala Mhigo, whipping in the wind in time to join in their chorus.

Morgana had a beautiful voice—even weary and shaking, it was strong and clear; she sang with her chin tilted up towards the heavens, staring at Rhalgr’s burning star upon the flag’s violet field.

His beacon, carried forth by all the hands fighting for liberty, had guided them home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! ❤ drop me a line if you'd like, and you can also find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/vulpinewood) for shitposting and memes while i'm deep in eorzea again.
> 
> (originally posted on [tumblr](https://farplane.tumblr.com/post/188113037318/for-hearth-and-home).)


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